Malevolent (31 page)

Sissy’s expression instantly shifted from frightened to sympathetic. “Oh, that poor girl. I know she did right in killing him, but that’s because I know the truth about Jonathon. Your client don’t have that to fall back on.”

Sissy stared at her for several seconds, clearly conflicted. Finally, she spoke. “I went to the house once a long time ago with some church ladies. We thought we’d bring Ms. Bourg some food and some clothes for the boys. She ran us off with a shotgun before we could even get out of the car. But I think I remember where it was. Maybe not exactly, but I can get you close.”

Sissy reached over and put her hand on Shaye’s arm. “And I’ll pray. You’re gonna need it.”

Chapter Twenty-Five

Emma splashed cold water on her face, then patted it dry with a paper towel. Giving her statement had been harder than she’d thought it would be. The numb feeling that had settled over her that morning had disappeared and with each sentence, it was as if she were living the horror all over again.

It’s over. You can leave now.

She headed out of the restroom and to reception. That’s what she had to keep reminding herself. Her luggage from the hotel was waiting for her at the reception desk and the SUV had a full tank of gas. There was nothing else to stop her from leaving. Hell, maybe she’d get to California, get on an airplane, and leave the country.

Without a passport.

Shit. She stopped in her tracks. She’d been so focused on leaving that she hadn’t even considered the things she had to have in order to establish herself in another state. She had license and credit cards on her, but her passport and Social Security card were tucked away in her jewelry box in her bedroom. Along with her mother’s wedding rings.

She hurried to reception. “I’m Emma Frederick. Is Jackson Lamotte available?”

“No ma’am. He left a couple minutes ago. Can I help you with something?”

“Are the police still at Mrs. Pearson’s house? I need to get some things from my house across the street, and I’d feel better if they were there.”

“Let me check.” He made a quick phone call. “Two units are still on-site processing the crime scene. Best guess, they should be there another thirty minutes or so.”

Emma bit her lower lip. She could always leave her house key at the police station and have Shaye go there later to collect her stuff. But she hated to ask the woman for another favor, and there was always the risk that someone would break in. She could get another passport or Social Security card, but her mother’s wedding rings were priceless.

Damn it. Why hadn’t she thought of them before now? If her mind wasn’t crap, she would have gotten all this stuff the day she was at the house with Shaye.
 

The police are right across the street. It’s broad daylight. You can call Shaye on your way and tell her what you’re doing.

“Thanks.” She grabbed her overnight bag and headed for her car before she changed her mind.
 

###

The motel manager flipped through the ring of keys, clearly agitated. “I don’t know why you cops can’t find something better to do than hassle honest businessmen.”

Jackson glanced around the fleabag motel and smirked. “I’d be willing to bet that the only honest thing that’s happened here in the last twenty-four hours was the two of us showing up.”

The manager shot him a dirty look. “I should make you get a warrant.”

“Go ahead,” Reynolds said, “but when we get that warrant, we’ll be sending a forensic team to inspect every square inch of this place. That includes your business records.”

The manager stomped up the stairs and walked to a room at the far end of the building. “The guy paid in advance for three days. Said he was leaving town after that.” The manager banged on the door. “It’s the motel manager. I need you to open up.”

They waited, but no sound came from the unit.

“Is there a back window or door?” Reynolds asked.

“No.” The manager pointed at the door and window on the front of the unit. “You’re looking at the only two ways in and out.”

“Open it,” Reynolds said, and pulled out his pistol, nodding to Jackson to do the same.

The manager opened the door and practically ran backward. Reynolds shoved the door open with his shoulder and moved inside, ready to fire, Jackson right behind him.
 

The smell hit them immediately, and they both flung their arms up over their nose and mouth. Reynolds headed for the bathroom and took a look inside.
 

“That’s our guy,” Reynolds said. He reached for his phone as he made tracks for the door.
 

Jackson pressed his arms tighter over his nose and mouth and stepped inside the tiny bathroom. He had to be sure, and one glance was all he needed. The body in the bathtub was definitely Ron Duhon. Jackson had never met the man before, but was certain he’d looked better. His body was slumped in the tub sideways, his legs hanging over the side. The band around his biceps and needle sticking out of his arm told Jackson almost everything he needed to know.

Still holding his breath, he grabbed a washcloth from the sink and stepped up to the bathtub. Leaning over, he grasped the man’s hand with the washcloth and moved the wrist and fingers. They flexed, which meant rigor had already come and gone.

“What the hell are you doing?” Reynolds’s voice boomed behind him.

Jackson dropped the washcloth and hurried out of the motel. When he reached the balcony, he expelled the breath he’d been holding and sucked in a huge gulp of hot air. “We were wrong,” he gasped.

“Wrong? Are you crazy? That’s Ron Duhon. I’d bet my badge on it.”

Jackson nodded. “It’s Ron Duhon, but he’s been dead at least twenty-four hours.”

“So?”

“That means he couldn’t have killed that paramedic last night at the hospital. He’s not Emma Frederick’s stalker.”

“Fuck,” Reynolds said.

###

Emma broke several speeding laws on the way to her house, but she didn’t even care. As soon as she had taken care of this one last errand, she planned on breaking even more. In fact, she wasn’t even going to consider doing the speed limit until she’d crossed the Louisiana state line into Texas. Then maybe she’d think about slowing down. Maybe.
 

She pulled up in front of Patty’s house and hurried to the front door. Patty had still been talking to the police when Emma left earlier to give her statement. She had no idea if the Realtor had been transferred to the hospital or was back home, but she’d already decided to drop the key through her mail slot. That way, if Patty was resting, Emma wouldn’t be the cause of her having to get up and answer the door. With Patty’s condition, her breathing was a big concern, and the stress of the situation would probably have caused her muscles to knot.
 

She dropped the key through the mail slot and heard it
ping
on the tile entryway, then dashed back to her car and rounded the block to her own home. Two cop cars were still parked in front of Mrs. Pearson’s house, but officers were getting into one of the cars as she parked. The officers from the second car were nowhere in sight, so Emma assumed they were still inside.
 

She hurried to the front door and let herself in, determined to get in and out before the cops left. She practically ran up the stairs to the bedroom and pulled open her nightstand. A single folder inside contained all her important documents. She’d always meant to rent a safe-deposit box for the items, but had never gotten around to it. A quick check determined that her Social Security card, birth certificate, and passport were inside. She placed the folder on the nightstand and pulled out a velvet-covered ring box. Her mother’s wedding ring glittered inside. She slipped the box in her pocket and grabbed the folder.

Three blind mice. Three blind mice.

The whistling came from the doorway behind her.

Her breath caught in her throat and pain rocketed through her chest as if she’d been shot. It wasn’t possible. The police were right outside. He wouldn’t risk coming after her here. Not now.
 

The whistling stopped. “I knew you’d come home again.”

Emma whirled around and gasped.

Three blind mice.

Chapter Twenty-Six

Shaye slowed to a stop and studied the rudimentary drawing Sissy had made for her. The problem she’d run into was that swamp roads weren’t clearly marked. Instead, Sissy had indicated places to turn with landmarks like “tree split by lightning.” A decade ago, those directions might have been stellar, but years of Gulf weather had made some of them a challenge to spot. She’d already encountered two dead ends and was about to turn around again.

Traipsing around the swamp with a paper drawing was a huge departure from GPS and Google Maps. But even if Hamet roads were visible on a satellite rendering, her phone service had been fading in and out ever since she left the highway.
 

Her phone buzzed and she saw it was a message from Emma.

Returning to my house to get passport, social security card, and my mother’s wedding rings and to drop off house key to Patty. Police are still there.

Shaye frowned. She would have preferred if Emma had driven straight to the interstate and headed the opposite direction from her house, but if the police were still out front, then she would be all right. Ron wouldn’t be foolish enough to turn up at his own murder scene, not in broad daylight.

Be careful.

She typed the message and hit Send, then sighed when service dropped again and the message remained unsent.

She put her SUV in reverse and tried one more time to locate three cypress trees at an intersection that formed a triangle. This was the last road, and it was proving to be the most elusive. After another ten minutes of driving around, she was almost ready to give up when she spotted two trees and what was left of a third to her right. She wheeled her SUV down the road and stopped to inspect the trees. It could be the set Sissy was talking about.
 

What the hell. She guided the SUV onto the dirt path. Worst case, she’d be turning around again. The path was filled with big holes, forcing her to inch along. The alternative would have been bouncing in and out of them so hard that it might cause physical damage, to her and the SUV. The brush on the side of the path grew closer and more dense until she could hear it scratching the outside of the truck.
 

The trees grew together overhead, forming a canopy over the path, and the farther she drove, the less light streamed through until it seemed more like dusk than afternoon. The tree limbs got lower and lower until she could hear moss running across the top of her SUV. Her headlights came on and she lifted her foot from the accelerator, slowing down to a crawl. The path was overgrown, but not so much that it appeared untraveled. If Helen had left when Jonathon did, someone had continued to come here afterward, at least for some time. Maybe not often, but often enough to keep the path from becoming completely grown over.

None of that did anything to diminish the creepiness of it all. The dark, mostly overgrown path with a canopy of trees and hanging moss looked like something out of a horror movie. The path made a sharp right and she guided the SUV around the corner, then slammed on the brakes as a shack appeared right in front of her. The SUV lurched and stopped only inches from the front porch.

If the path had looked like something out of a horror movie, the shack held the starring role. It was constructed of wood and tin. The wood was gray and rotting, the entire structure sagging on the right side. The tin was rusted and Shaye could see holes in the sheets that made up the roof.

The overwhelming desire to put her SUV in reverse and get the hell out of there washed over Shaye like a tidal wave. Sissy had been born in the swamps and held some old beliefs about haunts and such. Shaye didn’t tend toward fanciful beliefs, but she couldn’t argue with Sissy on this one. The house felt wrong. Oppressive.
 

Nothing good had happened here.
 

Given its condition, no one was living there, so a look around wouldn’t hurt. If Helen was the last to live here, maybe there was a family photo left behind, something concrete she could show to Emma when she explained her mysterious husband’s past. She reached for her purse and pulled out her nine-millimeter. The house may be devoid of people, but that didn’t mean swamp creatures hadn’t taken up residence, and many of them could be deadly, especially if they felt their home was threatened.

She left her headlights on, hoping to cast some light into the dark shack, but still grabbed her flashlight out of the glove box. She carefully chose her first step onto the dilapidated front porch. One wrong selection, and she’d go straight through to the ground. It wasn’t the drop that concerned her, but the thought of rusty nails piercing her skin. There was a time in her life when she slathered on Neosporin like most women did body lotion. She had no desire to revisit that.

She paused in front of the windows to peer inside, but the grime on the glass prevented almost all of the glow from her headlights from entering the structure. In the dim light, it was difficult to make out anything inside except shadows. At least none of the shadows were moving. She continued to the door and found it contained no lock or even a doorknob. She pushed it open and stepped inside.